On the face of it, taking snapshots of works of art is a pretty worthless activity. A photo taken on a cheap camera or a mobile phone is never going to capture the depth of the original. Also, the resulting picture (like several in this collection) is likely to be distorted, as it’s hard to get square on to a painting on a gallery wall. And there are so many professionally produced reproductions available, from postcards to prints and shiny coffee table books. I own some of these – but I still take my own snaps. For me it is the best way to ‘possess’ an artwork. It proves that I have seen the original and liked it enough to want a personal memory of the work, its context and the occasion when I encountered it.
So for years I have been visiting galleries and museums and taking occasional photos. I have recently spent many enjoyable hours going through over forty years worth of snaps and in this article I present a selection of fifty of my favourites, which together provide a snapshot (pun intended) of my taste, and a kind of overview of modern art.
I have arranged this selection in (mostly) chronological order of the dates of birth of the artists. I prefer museum collections to be arranged chronologically rather than thematically, as at Tate Modern and some others, as to me it makes it easier to put works into their context (in a couple of places I’ve placed younger artists earlier than older ones, to highlight links and progressions). The artworks themselves however can come from any point in the artists’ careers and don’t necessarily reflect their best work – it depends what was on display and what caught my eye. The oldest artist (Edouard Manet) was born in 1832 and the youngest (Ron Mueck) in 1958, making him 67 years old at the time of writing. This means that my definition of modern art is both broad (covering a period of over 120 years) and curtailed, in that no artist who is not eligible to draw a pension is included. This essentially represents my taste, and my wariness of ‘contemporary art’, about which I have written in another article. Virtually all the works in this collection are paintings and sculptures and there is little of ‘conceptual art’. I’ve not restricted myself to one work per artist (a couple have four works included) so 39 artists are represented in total.
What can we glean about my taste from this selection? 23 of the photos depict paintings, while 27 depict sculptures or installations. There are overall more abstract than representational works. My definition of ‘sculpture’ is of necessity very broad – and not all the paintings are standard oil on canvas. The proportion of sculptures/installations increases as we come nearer to the present. Only four women artists are included, reflecting largely the limited opportunities for women during the ‘modern’ period, and for the same reason all but two of the artists are white, and European/American. Some movements (e.g. cubism, surrealism, pop art) are under-represented, while there is plenty of abstract expressionism and minimalism. And there are no ‘young British artists’ (yBas).
The photos were taken in the UK, France, Spain and the Netherlands, at modern art museums and sculpture parks. The number taken on the continent partly reflects that it is easier to motivate oneself to visit museums when on holiday than to make a special trip to one in the UK, but it is also reflects that, in the days before my phone became my main camera, it was pot-luck whether I took a camera with me when visiting a gallery. I have paid a number of visits to Tate Modern, Tate Liverpool, the Royal Academy and the modern art museum in Edinburgh that have gone unrecorded. This has led to many gaps in my photo collection, where I have seen artworks but not photographed them. I particularly regret having nothing by the Fauvist painter Andre Derain, the slick abstract sculptor Constantin Brancusi, the Abstract Expressionists Jackson Pollock and Clifford Styll and the British figurative painter Lucien Freud (I’m also surprised that I haven’t taken any photos of paintings by Vincent van Gogh, despite ample opportunities to do so). For good or ill, my photos reflect my taste and my taste alone.
So, biased, incomplete, fuzzy, wonky and decidedly uncool, here is my photo gallery of great works of modern art.
Oh, and there is one cheat, and one bonus photo.
1. Edouard Manet (1832-1883)
Le Dejeurner sur l’herbe (1863)
The Louvre, Paris, France (now in the Musee d’Orsay)
This photo was taken on a trip to Paris in 1981. It is imperfect, but the image it portrays is unmistakeable. Manet’s painting caused a commotion at the Salon des Refuses, an exhibition in Paris in 1863 of works rejected by that year’s official annual Salon. Manet could mildly claim that it was merely a modernised version of Titian’s 1508 painting Pastoral Concert, which also featured clothed men and nude women, but the impact of the brazenly naked woman staring out of the painting, the bleached colouring of her skin, and the altered perspective of the scene make the painting dangerously unconventional – and arguably the first work of modern art.
2. Paul Cezanne (1839 – 1906)
Montagne Saint-Victoire (1890)
Musee d’Orsay, Paris, France
I came rather late to Cezanne, through reading Alex Danchev’s fine biography, and through an enthusiastic teacher at an art group I was involved with. Although Cezanne was contemporary with the Impressionists (and just seven years younger than Manet), he is usually regarded as a ‘Post-impressionist’, moving painting forward through revolutionary brushwork and use of colour, and presaging the development by Picasso and Braque of Cubism. Cezanne painted over forty pictures of this (small) mountain, which overlooked his home town of Aix-en-Provence.
3. Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947)
La Toilette (1914)
Musee d’Orsay, Paris, France
Bonnard is more obviously a Post-impressionist, being born a generation after the original Impressionist group. He is best known for his many nude paintings of his wife Marthe, all in domestic settings and all depicting her as a young woman, despite their fifty year marriage. I have a poster of this work on my wall, and it was succinctly described one day by an eight-year-old friend of my son, who said, “Look, there’s a woman with no clothes on, showing her bum!”.
4. Henry Matisse (1869-1954)
Landscape at Collioure (1905)
Museum Of Modern Art, New York
Kasimir Malevich (1879-1955)
5. Supremus nr. 50 (1915)
6. Yellow Plane in Dissolution (1917); White Plane in Dissolution (1918)
Stedelijk, Amsterdam, Netherlands
The experiments of the Post-impressionists, Cubists and Fauves in Paris led inexorably to paintings that were purely abstract, though the first artists to take that step were Russian, in the years around the Revolution. Malevich named his approach to art ‘Suprematism’, so called as he believed that shape and colour should ‘reign supreme’ over subject matter or story telling. His use of primary colours and basic geometric shapes resonated with…
7. Piet Mondrian (1872-1944)
Composition No. IV (1929)
Stedelijk, Amsterdam, Netherlands
After WWI, approaching his 40s, Mondrian, like Malevich, turned to producing abstract works based on primary colours and basic geometric shapes, naming his approach ‘Neo-plasticism’. Along with Theo van Doesburg and others, he founded, in 1917, ‘De Stijl’ (the Style), a journal that became an approach to art, architecture and design. It is remarkable how such a simple approach became so iconic, remaining today among the best known and loved images of modern art.
8. Bart van de Leck
The Cat (1914)
Kroller-Muller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands
Van de Leck was an associate of Mondrian in De Stijl, and also made abstract works with primary colours, but before that he painted this strikingly simple picture of...a cat.
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)
9. Woman in a Red Armchair (1932)
10. The Dream (1932)
Tate Modern, London
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Three things to know about Picasso: (1) He was a narcissistic and priapic old goat; (2) He could draw like a bastard; (3) He never produced an abstract work. I saw these paintings of Picasso’s then lover Marie-Therese Walter, who was at the time 23 years old (Picasso was 50), at the exhibition ‘Picasso 1932: Love, Fame Tragedy’, which came to Tate Modern in 2018. They are in Picasso’s mature ‘neo-cubist’ style, with echoes of surrealism and a heavy dose of eroticism.
11. Bulls Head (1942)
Picasso Museum, Malaga, Spain
Picasso also had a peerless eye and a sense of humour, as evidenced by this ‘found object’ sculpture, made from the saddle and handlebars of a bicycle.
12. Fish (1952)
Soller Railway Station, Mallorca, Spain
In the unlikely setting of a quaint little railway station in Mallorca is a small exhibition of works by Picasso and local hero Joan Miro (see below). Picasso turned to ceramics in the 1950s and either by himself or in association with professional craftsmen produced many charming pieces, including this one.
Joan Miro (1893-1983)
13. 2+5=7 (1965)
Fundacio Joan Miro, Barcelona, Spain
I was introduced to Miro’s art at the above-mentioned exhibition in Soller railway station, and subsequently visited the Miro museum in his birthplace, Barcelona. In the 1920s, Miro was associated with the Surrealists and some of his paintings include surrealist-influenced symbolism. However others, like this later work are more purely abstract.
14. Torse de Femme (1967)
Fundacio Joan Miro, Barcelona, Spain
In later life, Miro turned increasingly to ceramics and sculpture, making many endearing alien-like near-human forms, such as this depiction of a woman’s body.
15. Ben Nicholson (1894-1982)
White Relief (version 2) (1938)
Kroller-Muller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands
The British art scene between the wars rather lagged behind the European avant-garde, but the much-travelled and well-connected Nicholson brought back some of the latest ideas, in particular abstraction. His reputation today is rather overshadowed by that of his second wife Barbara Hepworth (see below), and he is best remembered for his strongly modernist ‘White Reliefs’, made of layers of painted and carved wood, all produced within a few years of each other in the 1930s.
Barbara Hepworth (1903-1975)
16. Spring (1966)
The Hepworth, Wakefield, UK
Hepworth was born in Wakefield, Yorkshire and studied at Leeds College of Art alongside Henry Moore. They became the dominant figures in British sculpture between the wars, and for many years after. Following her marriage to Ben Nicholson they moved to St Ives in Cornwall, which became a centre for art and artists. However she was honoured by the town of her birth with the establishment of the modern art museum which bears her name and contains a good selection of her works, including this example of her ‘stringed’ wooden sculptures.
17. The Family of Man (1970)
Yorkshire Sculpture Park, UK
One of the last major works Hepworth produced before her death, this is a set of nine sculptures made for an open-air setting (the photo includes just four). I am a big fan of sculpture parks – seeing artworks in landscape settings enhances both the art and the landscape.
18. Henry Moore (1898-1986)
Two Large Forms (1966-9)
Yorkshire Sculpture Park, UK
Overall I prefer Barbara Hepworth to Henry Moore, whose work can to my eyes seem rather blobby. However, this piece is undoubtedly impressive, especially in its park setting on a hot summers day.
19. Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966)
Femme Nue Debout (1954)
Femme Assise (1948-50)
Pompidou Centre, Paris, France
Swiss-born Giacometti’s attenuated sculptures are instantly recognisable. He began to produce them after WWII, and they may have been a response to the horrors that were revealed in Europe in the aftermath of the war. It would be nice to have just a little one to put on my mantelpiece – if I had a spare £10 million.
20. Mark Rothko (1903-1970)
Untitled (1950-2)
Tate Britain, London, UK
In 2016 I visited the ‘Abstract Expressionism’ exhibition at London’s Royal Academy. This movement came to the fore in the United States in the early 1950s, and presaged the shifting of the avant-garde from Europe to America. I had seen paintings before by the likes of Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko, but I was unfamiliar with Abstract Expressionism as an art movement. The exhibition was an eye-opener, and confirmed to me that what I really liked was modern art (as opposed to the Old Masters), and especially abstract art. Never mind that as a group they were macho, hard-drinking, misogynist Big Swinging Dicks – the energy and scale of their art blew me away. Sadly, I didn’t take my camera to that exhibition but I now look out for abstract expressionist works wherever I go. This is a classic example of Rothko’s ‘colour field’ art, rather incongruously displayed at Tate Britain, where it outshines the tepid British works that fill the rest of the room.
21. Willem de Kooning (1904-1997)
Montauk IV (1969)
Stedelijk, Amsterdam, Netherlands
De Kooning lived up to the classic stereotype of the alpha male Abstract Expressionist, and his art was powerful and in-your-face. He wasn’t afraid to include figures in his art (especially nude women), and this work, one of a number he painted in 1969 in the seaside resort of Montauk, Long Island, includes figurative aspects. In later life he contracted Alzheimer’s disease but continued to paint, with assistance, producing many simple, ethereal and effective works.
22. Barnett Newman (1905-1970)
Cathedra (1951)
Stedelijk, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Newman was perhaps the most ‘minimalist’ of the Abstract Expressionists, specialising in huge, largely single-colour paintings that all included a vertical line down the length of the canvas, that Newman called a ‘zip’. Minimalism is my second favourite art movement, so Newman’s paintings work for me.
23. Kenneth Noland (1924-2010)
Transwest (1965)
Stedelijk, Amsterdam, Netherlands
A generation younger than the above-mentioned Abstract Expressionists but, like them, coming to prominence in the 1950s, Noland’s abstract works are based on geometric shapes and ‘hard edged’ bands of colour. The critic Clement Greenberg coined a new term for the colour field works of Noland, Helen Frankenthaler and Morris Louis: ‘Post-painterly Abstraction’. Whatever.
24. Roy Lichtenstein (1923 – 1997)
In the Car (1963)
Modern Art I, Edinburgh, UK
I’m not a huge fan of Pop Art, the movement that replaced Abstract Expressionism in the USA in the 1960s (I really don’t get Andy Warhol), but it’s hard to resist Roy Lichtenstein’s massively enlarged comic-strip-esque scenes.
25. Eduardo Paolozzi (1924 – 2005)
St Sebastian III (Figure with Words) (1958)
Kroller-Muller Sculpture Park, Otterlo, Netherlands
Meanwhile, in Europe...artistic life found its feet again following WWII. In the UK in the early 1950s, a group of young sculptors including Eduardo Paolozzi, William Turnbull, Elizabeth Frink and others were given the name ‘Geometry of Fear’, in response to their spiky, twisted alien-like metal figures. Paolozzi was born in Leith and in later life donated a large amount of material to the National Galleries of Scotland – a reconstruction of his studio is a popular exhibit at Modern One in Edinburgh. He made art in many different forms but his angular, robot-like sculptures are his signature works.
26. Anthony Caro (1924 – 2013)
Erl King (2009)
Frieze 2017 Sculpture Exhibition, Regents Park, London, UK
Caro was a contemporary of the Geometry of Fear sculptors, but his art took a different path. Early in his career he was an assistant to Henry Moore, and in the late 1950s he came under the influence of the critic and supporter of the Abstract Expressionists Clement Greenberg (the John Ruskin of his day). Consequently, Caro went down the road of abstract sculpture. In the early nineteen-sixties he produced slender painted-steel abstracts that are regarded as his best work, but this very late work, produced when he was in his eighties (and rather Paolozzi-esque) is also powerful.
27. Yves Klein (1928 – 1962)
L’Accord Bleu (RE10) (1960)
Stedelijk, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Klein was highly original; an early conceptual artist who worked in performance art, photography, found object sculpture and painting, and was a consummate showman. In 1960 he patented an ultramarine blue pigment that he called ‘International Klein Blue (IKB)’. He used it in unusual ways, most notoriously in his ‘Anthropometries of the Blue Period’, a series of paintings made at events where naked models daubed themselves and each other with IKB and smeared themselves onto canvases stretched on the floor and walls. In comparison, this work is almost conventional, made of sponges soaked in IKB and attached to a blue ground.
28 Sol LeWitt (1928 – 2007)
123454321 (1993)
Yorkshire Sculpture Park, UK
Minimalism grew out of Abstract Expressionism in the USA during the 1960s, and I’m a big fan of it. It involves simple structures, clean lines and basic materials. Sol LeWitt was an early pioneer of the approach, while also touching on conceptual art and pop art. This sculpture, made of cinder blocks proportioned exactly 1:1:2, is displayed in a setting chosen by the artist himself.
29. Robert Ryman (1930 – 2019)
Monitor (1978)
Stedelijk, Amsterdam, Netherlands
My eldest daughter disapproves of modern art in general, and minimalism in particular, so to tease her I take delight in sending her photographs of minimalist works, especially the predominantly white paintings of Robert Ryman, who was associated with the minimalists but disliked the label. His works explore subtle variations of shade and texture, and as in this example, frequently leave rough edges, that become part of the painting’s ambience.
30. Carl Andre (1935 – 2024)
Twenty-third Steel Cardinal (1974)
Stedelijk, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Minimalist sculptor Carl Andre achieved notoriety in 1975 when the Tate Gallery purchased his work ‘Equivalent VIII’, which consisted of two layers of housebricks, leading to outrage in the right-wing press at the perceived waste of money. He achieved greater notoriety in 1985, when his wife died following an unexplained fall from their 34th floor apartment – Andre was charged with her murder but wast never convicted. This room in the Stedelijk is minimalist heaven, with a classic Andre steel plate installation accompanied by white paintings by Robert Ryman (out of view in this picture), Lucio Fontana, Piero Manzoni and Agnes Martin.
31. Yayoi Kusama (b1929)
Narcissus Garden (1966)
Voorlinden, The Hague, Netherlands
Japanese artist Kusama is a phenomenon. She came to prominence in the 1960s as an early proponent of conceptual art and is today one of the most popular artists in the world, creating eye-catching sculptures and installations, especially her mirror-walled Infinity Rooms. Famously, she has lived for the past fifty years or so as a voluntary patient in a psychiatric hospital. This work, made of highly polished spheres, allows spectators to view themselves (like Narcissus in the Greek myth), but it is also effective with the backdrop of Voorlinden’s fine gardens.
32. Bridget Riley (b1931)
Hesitate (1964)
Tate Britain, London, UK
Riley was (and is) a leading practitioner of ‘Op Art’ (short for optical art), a term originally coined by Time magazine for the work of the French-Hungarian painter Victor Vasarely, who, from the 1930s, developed a style using precise geometry and visual effects. Riley came to prominence in the 1960s, with striking black and white ‘tromp l’oeil’ effects, such as this painting, rather grudgingly displayed at Tate Britain. Dismissed at the time by critics as gimmicky and pandering to the masses, it became one of the iconic styles of the ‘swinging sixties’. I’m a bit too young to have swung in the sixties, but I now find her work groovy.
33. Howard Hodgkin (1932 – 2017)
Learning About Russian Music (1999)
The Hepworth, Wakefield, UK
Howard Hodgkin is my favourite painter. His mature style of small-scale, highly coloured, complex abstract works (and his signature habit of painting over the picture’s frame) sums up everything I like about modern art. He of course claimed that his paintings are not abstract, in that they are his responses to his experiences and memories, and the people he met. Despite my liking for his work, this is actually the only one of his paintings I have seen, as it were, in the flesh. The next time there is a retrospective of his work somewhere, I will ensure I make a pilgrimage to it.
Richard Serra (1938 – 2024)
34. Open Ended (2008)
Voorlinden, The Hague, Netherlands
Serra has been called ‘the last of the abstract expressionists’. Is signature style is massive, simple metal forms, often placed in public spaces. This one, comprising two huge steel walls that viewers can walk through, is indoors, in an extensive gallery at the fine Voorlinden museum in the Netherlands.
35. One (1987-8)
Kroller-Muller Sculpture Park, Otterlo, Netherlands
A slightly smaller-scale work, whose impact is enhanced by its outdoor setting.
36. Bruce Nauman (b1941)
My Name as though it were Written on the surface of the Moon
Stedelijk, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Some of the artists in this collection (e.g. Mondrian, Giacometti, Rothko, etc) developed a signature style, that was both artistically profound and popular (and remunerative), and spent much of the rest of their careers producing more and more works in that style. Others were far more varied in their artistic interests and output. Bruce Nauman’s work is perhaps the most varied of all, and the nearest I get to including conceptual art. Since the 1960s he as created films, videos, sculptures, installations and sound art (I attended his 2004 wholly sound-based installation ‘Raw Materials’ in Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall). Most accessible, however, are his works in neon. Some are profound, some funny, some rude – and some, like this one, just are.
37. Michael Craig-Martin (b1941)
Wheelbarrow (Red) (2013)
Frieze Sculpture Exhibition 2017, Regents Park, London, UK
Irish-born Craig-Martin began as a conceptual artist and teacher at Goldsmith’s College in London, where in the late 1980s he taught Damien Hirst and other yBas. His best known conceptual work, created in 1973, consisted of a glass of water on a glass shelf, was entitled ‘Oak Tree’, and included a spoof Q & A session with the artist in which he explains how the glass of water becomes an oak tree. In the 1990s he moved away from conceptualism and developed a more commercially attractive style, producing brightly coloured graphic depictions (paintings and sculptures) of everyday objects – and has made a good living out of it. Damien Hirst clearly learnt from his old teacher’s example, combining his own cutting edge conceptual works with mass-produced (but lucrative) paintings of dots, swirls and butterflies.
38. Bernar Venet (b1941)
17 Acute Unequal Angles (2016)
Frieze Sculpture Exhibition 2017, Regents Park, London, UK
I confess to knowing nothing about French-born Venet or his work, but in Regents Park on a warm summer’s day it makes a good picture.
39. Sean Scully (b1945)
Vincent 2 (2015)
Voorlinden, The Hague, Netherlands
Born in Ireland but brought up in London, Sean Scully is my kind of abstract artist; as focused on uniform shapes and deep colours as Mondrian, Rothko or Noland. I much prefer to experience modern art than to analyse it, and Scully’s paintings (and sculptures) let me do just that.
40. Anselm Kiefer (b1945)
Works from the exhibition ‘Keifer/Van Gogh (2025)
Stedelijk, Amsterdam, Netherlands
In the early 1980s, painting was dominated by large-scale, portentous, figurative expressionist works by Keifer, fellow-German Georg Baselitz and the American Julian Schnabel. I can’t say I’m a huge fan of Kiefer, despite his forthright denunciations of Nazism, finding his works overblown and messy. However, this grand display at the Stedelijk is undoubtedly impressive.
Anthony Gormley (b1950)
41 & 42. Critical Mass II (1995)
Voorlinden, The Hague, Netherlands
If Howard Hodgkin is my favourite painter, then Anthony Gormley is my favourite sculptor. And not just mine - iconic works such as the Angel of the North have made him one of the UK’s most popular artists. Along with popularity has inevitably come critical sniffiness, and accusations of egotism for using his own body as the model for his signature ‘gorminators’ (to borrow Eddy Frankel’s phrase). Sixty of these life-size sculptures were scattered around the beautiful grounds of Voorlinden for this piece; these two photos are examples.
43. Amazonian Field (1992)
Voorlinden, The Hague, Netherlands
This piece was originally commissioned for the 1991 Rio Earth Summit. 24,000 clay figures were created by young people from Rio’s favelas – mini gorms!
44. Breathing Room III (2010)
Voorlinden, The Hague, Netherlands
This eerie installation, made of a metal grid covered with fluorescent paint, shows that Gormley’s practice stretches far beyond his ‘gorminators’. As with much of his work, it’s best to ignore the rather overblown ‘blurb’ that comes with it, and just experience its impact.
Helen Chadwick (1953-1996)
45. Ego Geometria Sum: The Labours III (1983-4)
The Hepworth, Wakefield, UK
Chadwick was a highly original artist, her work embracing sculpture, photography and installations, often with a feminist theme, and/or a focus on the visceral aspects of life. She frequently used her own (nude) body in her work, as in this installation, in which twelve plywood models of objects from her early life are covered with nude photographs, with a background of pink curtains and additional personal photographs.
46. Piss Flowers (1991-2)
The Hepworth, Wakefield, UK
Perhaps Chadwick’s best known (as most eye-catching) works are this series of plaster sculptures, made when Chadwick and her husband urinated into packed snow, poured plaster over the resulting melts and inverted the dried casts. Chadwick called them ‘a penis-envy farce’.
47. Anish Kapoor (b1954)
Untitled (2018)
Kroller-Muller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands
Indian-born Kapoor specialises in large-scale sculptures and installations. In a recent (possibly tongue in cheek) quote, he claimed, “I really do feel very strongly that I have nothing to say; I have no message to give the world and nor do I want to give the world a message”. Would that more artists felt that way. This is one of a number of recent sculptures in which a block of stone is carved from the inside out, in this case leaving a stark, egg-like shape.
48. Jaume Plensa (b1955)
Wilsis (2016)
Yorkshire Sculpture Park, UK
Catalan sculptor Plensa’s works are displayed in public places across the world. Many take the form of this example: an elongated head, quiet and dignified, with eyes closed – as you would see if this photo wasn’t in silhouette.
49. Ai Weiwei (b1957)
Sunflower Seeds (2010)
Tate Modern, London, UK
This is the only Turbine Hall installation at Tate Modern that I have photographed (and only the second I have been present at – my visits to Tate Modern have tended to coincide with the six-month fallow period between installations). Ai Weiwei commissioned millions of hand-crafted porcelain depictions of sunflower seeds from small-scale workshops in the Chinese city of Jingdezhen, apparently as a critical comment on China’s consumer-goods-manufacturing economy. The resulting structure is quietly impressive.
50. Ron Mueck (b1958)
Couple under an Umbrella (2013)
Voorlinden, The Hague, Netherlands
Australian-born Mueck specialises in impressively lifelike depictions of individuals, that are either scaled down or, as in this case, scaled up to twice actual size. He was included with the yBas in Charles Saatchi’s ‘Sensations’ exhibition at the Royal Academy, and a sculpture entitled ‘Boy’ was a centrepiece of the Millenium Dome in 2000 - which probably didn’t do his reputation much good; critical responses to his work since then have been mixed, to say the least. For me, as with so many of the artworks in this selection, impact is all, and this installation is hard to ignore.
Bonus Photo
Statue of the Duke of Wellington by Carlo Marocetti (1844) with a Traffic Cone on his Head
Glasgow Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA), Scotland, UK
The statue was erected in 1844, when the building that now houses GOMA was the city’s Royal Exchange. For decades, it has unofficially sported a traffic cone on the Duke’s head. Occasionally the City council removes it, but another one soon appears. No less an artistic celebrity than Banksy has called it his ‘favourite work of art in the UK’, and so we will let it represent the conceptual pieces that have come to dominate the contemporary art world in the last few decades.
